The Fire Seer and Her Quradum Page 17

  “Maybe if you stopped taking it entirely, the shaking would stop.”

  Gadatas shook his head. “It’s too late for that. The Mothers have cursed me forever.”

  “When Bel-Sumai releases us from here,” said Mandir, “go and see Neshi in Rakigari. He specializes in lifting the curses off of people who have sinned. I should know, because he lifted mine.”

  “I’ll think about it,” said Gadatas.

  Chapter 23

  After leaving Gadatas, Mandir and Taya headed for their guest room. Mandir was mulling over some new theories about the case. He still had no clear idea of who had killed Tufan and Yanzu, but he was beginning to assemble a picture of how the murders might have taken place.

  His experience treating drug addicts during his Year of Penance informed his understanding of what had happened to Gadatas. Addicts often became ill when they stopped taking whatever drug they were addicted to, and Gadatas’s shaking, highly unlikely to be divine punishment, looked a lot like withdrawal sickness. That would explain why the shaking lessened when Gadatas took nepenthe.

  Except that his shaking ought to go away completely when he took the drug. Why didn’t it?

  Once in the guest room, Mandir closed the door and, as was becoming his regular habit, checked the window for spies. “So, what do you think about Gadatas?”

  “Not sure about Gadatas,” said Taya. “But I think we may have found the murder weapon.”

  “That’s what I think,” said Mandir. “We can’t be certain Gadatas’s nepenthe was used, since Tufan kept it on hand as well, but if I wanted to steal poison to kill somebody with, I’d find it a lot easier to take it from Gadatas than from Tufan.”

  “This new source of nepenthe opens up our timeline,” said Taya. “Before, we weren’t sure if the wine cup could have been poisoned while it was sitting unattended in the kitchen because we don’t know if Tufan was in his room at that time. If he was still in his room, nobody could have stolen his nepenthe. But they could have stolen Gadatas’s.”

  “Yes,” said Mandir. “Although I wish we could narrow the timeline instead of opening it up.”

  “Here’s what I don’t understand,” said Taya. “Both Tufan and Gadatas took nepenthe regularly. But only Gadatas seemed to be suffering from it. Why?”

  “I don’t know,” said Mandir. “Maybe it’s because Gadatas takes it all the time while Tufan only takes it at night.”

  “Or they’re taking a different quantity of the drug,” said Taya.

  “A single drop has always been the dose,” said Mandir. “That’s what Tufan takes, and what I took on the occasions I stole his nepenthe. I know why Gadatas was shaking, by the way. That shaking is caused by withdrawal sickness. His body is demanding more and more of the drug.”

  “And yet when we saw him dose himself, he only took one drop,” said Taya.

  “Could be he was embarrassed of his habit and intended to take more after we left,” said Mandir. “Or he’s being cautious. Everyone knows that taking too much nepenthe will kill you. Here’s what I think happened. Somebody stole Gadatas’s nepenthe vial, poured a quantity of it into some other container to use later, and replaced the missing nepenthe with water. If that’s what happened, Gadatas has been taking watered-down nepenthe ever since. And that’s why he has withdrawal sickness.”

  “Great Mothers, that would explain it perfectly,” said Taya.

  “Can you scry outside Gadatas’s house and find out who took his nepenthe vial?”

  Taya’s brow furrowed. “First we need to know when that person took it. Without more information, I don’t know what vision to ask Isatis for. What would it look like—just somebody walking away from Gadatas’s house? Other people may have visited Gadatas for innocent reasons. I need to ask Isatis for a specific event or a specific time, and I don’t think we have either.”

  “Scratch that, then.” Too bad, though; that information would have solved the murders quickly.

  “I wonder who knew that Gadatas had nepenthe in his quarters,” said Taya.

  Mandir frowned. They ought to have asked Gadatas that question when they had the opportunity—in fact, it was sufficiently important that they might need to go back and ask it right now. Setsi and Nindar seemed not to know that Gadatas was addicted to nepenthe; they’d said he didn’t show up for their schooling sessions because he was drunk or hungover. But somebody must have known the truth, and that somebody might be the murderer.

  He heard something—a whisper of dry grass from outside. Were they being spied upon? He’d already checked the window.

  Taya was looking at him expectantly, waiting for a response. Her eyebrows quirked. Perhaps she’d noticed his distraction, which meant he needed to do something before she spoke up and gave him away. “You’re right. We need to ask Gadatas about that. Why don’t you give me a rundown of who you think might have known about the nepenthe?”

  She looked confused, as there was no reason she should know, any more than he did, who was aware of Gadatas’s problem with nepenthe. It would make more sense just to visit Gadatas and ask. But he needed to keep her talking for a little while. He twitched his head toward the window to signal her, and he gestured with his hand, go on.

  Her gaze darted to the window. It appeared she understood. “Let’s consider the possibilities. First on the list are Setsi and Nindar, because the two of them saw Gadatas on a daily basis, or at least they were supposed to. They knew he had some sort of problem, and while they claimed it was drink, they might have been covering for him.”

  Perfect: her wordy speculation covered his movements as he eased toward the window.

  “Then, let’s see, Runawir is a possibility,” said Taya. “He seems to know what’s going on around the household. He’s a ringleader of sorts...”

  Mandir, moving slowly, reached the wall just left of the window. He stood still, listening for movement of any kind: dirt crunching underfoot, a stick breaking, foliage rustling. After a moment, he identified the sound of someone breathing. He jabbed his hand out the window and encountered flesh.

  Closing his hand around a skinny forearm, he yanked upward and found himself face-to-face with Ilinos, who’d been crouching in the dirt below the window.

  Ilinos. Was there no end to the teenager’s obnoxiousness? “You want to hear what we have to say?” Mandir snarled. “Then come inside.” He dragged the boy in through the window.

  “What—” sputtered Ilinos. “Why’d you—I was just walking by!”

  “In the dirt?” said Mandir. “Below our window?”

  “I wasn’t below your window.”

  “Oh, shut up.” Mandir felt his hands clenching into fists again. There was something about Ilinos that really got his goat; he could hardly look at the boy without thinking violence. But he wasn’t going to lose his temper again. He was done with that. He was better than that.

  “Why were you spying on us?” asked Taya.

  “I wasn’t spying!” Ilinos cried.

  “Of course you were,” said Taya. “If you’re trying to find out if we know that you loosed the dogs, we do know that.”

  Ilinos feigned a look of innocence that made Mandir want to punch him in the face even more. “You think I loosed the dogs?”

  “Don’t deny it,” said Taya. “Mother Isatis herself showed me it was you.”

  Ilinos, who was looking rather pale except for his puffy, discolored eye, glanced back at the window.

  Mandir moved to block his escape route. “Since you were so kind as to drop by, you can answer some questions for us.”

  Ilinos swallowed. “What questions?”

  “How much did you hear, just now?” asked Mandir.

  “Nothing,” said Ilinos. “I said—”

  “How much did you hear?” Mandir roared.

  Ilinos retreated a step. “Nothing. Just the part about the tutor.”

  “What about the tutor?” asked Mandir.

  “That he had nepenthe,” said Ilinos.

&n
bsp; Taya broke in. “Did you know, before hearing it just now, that Gadatas used nepenthe?”

  “No,” said Ilinos.

  Mandir wasn’t sure he believed that. While the kid didn’t strike him as one of the brighter of his half-brothers, he’d surely caught on to the fact that anybody who knew about the tutor’s nepenthe stash would be looked upon with suspicion. And Ilinos was already suspicious for having loosed the dogs. “Why did you release the dogs from their pen on the night of the murder?”

  Ilinos looked from Mandir to Taya but said nothing.

  “We know you released them,” said Taya. “I saw it.”

  Ilinos folded his arms. “I was trying to get Setsi in trouble. I didn’t kill anybody!”

  “Where did you go after you loosed the dogs?” asked Mandir.

  “I went to Setsi’s room to tell him they were out,” said Ilinos. “Then I went to my own room, where I stayed until morning. I didn’t poison anybody, I swear.”

  Mandir’s brows rose. “How did you know the victims were poisoned?”

  “Everyone knows that,” said Ilinos.

  He scowled. Between the palace guards’ official investigation and his and Taya’s unofficial one, information must be leaking. “What else have you heard?”

  “That Runawir was the one who stabbed Yanzu,” said Ilinos. “That Shala was the one who prepared Tufan’s wine cup, and she left it unattended in the kitchen.”

  Information was definitely leaking, probably more from the palace guards than from him and Taya, but who knew? Privacy was hard to come by in a place like this. Maybe they could be heard during their conversations through the mud-brick walls by people in adjacent rooms. “Is there anything else you want to tell me?”

  “No,” said Ilinos.

  Mandir raised a brow at Taya—did she have anything else to ask? She shook her head.

  “You can go,” he told Ilinos. “But if I catch you outside our window again, I’ll give you a black eye to match the first.”

  Mandir opened the door, and Ilinos hurried out of it. He shut the door again. “Great Mothers, I hate that boy.”

  “Do you?” asked Taya. “It’s not showing at all.”

  Bantu kasu annasi, she was teasing him. What a breakthrough, that she trusted him enough to make light of his behavior, though it embarrassed both of them. He sent her a sheepish grin.

  A bit of movement through the window caught his eye. Highly sensitive now to the possibility of eavesdroppers, he hurried over to see what it was. A horse galloped to the stable and slid to a halt. Nindar came out of the stable and took the horse’s reins.

  “It’s Bel-Ditana,” Mandir said to Taya. “Let’s go out there and see if he managed to track down his fugitive.”

  ∞

  Bel-Ditana’s return attracted interest from much of the household. Setsi and Nindar were with him already, and as Taya headed out with Mandir to join them, she saw Bel-Sumai converging on their target as well, followed by Runawir and Shardali. Everyone wanted to know what had happened with Shala.

  Bel-Ditana swung down from the winded, sweat-soaked horse. He and Bel-Sumai touched fingers.

  “Any sign of her?” asked Bel-Sumai.

  Nindar took the horse and began to walk him in big circles nearby.

  “I tracked her quite a ways,” said Bel-Ditana. “Lost her at a creek. She must have walked her horse upstream or downstream in the water, but I couldn’t find her tracks anywhere on the opposite bank.”

  Taya let out her breath, which she hadn’t realized until now that she’d been holding. Shala had escaped. Thank the Mothers.

  “I’d like to go back out and look again,” continued Bel-Ditana. “But I’ll need a brace of horses so I can rest one while I ride the other, and I’ll need a week’s worth of supplies.”

  “We’ll discuss it inside,” said Bel-Sumai.

  Taya hoped Bel-Sumai would decide the search was too time-consuming and call it off. She didn’t think Shala had murdered the two men, and she doubted they thought so either. Of course, there was a downside to the search being called off: the number of people Bel-Sumai could accuse of the murders was getting smaller, which made Mandir a likelier target.

  The palace guards headed back to the main house, and the crowd began to disperse.

  Nindar was still hobbling in large circles, cooling out the horse. Since he was on the short list of people they still needed to talk to, she headed his way, and Mandir came after her.

  “He shouldn’t have run this horse so hard,” said Nindar. “Look at him—he’s practically shaking on his legs.”

  “Give Bel-Ditana a break,” said Mandir. “He was pursuing a fugitive.”

  “Not on the way back, he wasn’t,” said Nindar.

  “Will the horse be all right?” Taya fell in with Nindar, walking alongside him.

  “Probably, if I cool him out carefully,” said Nindar. “But he’ll need to rest for a few days. Bel-Ditana had better not plan on taking him out again.”

  “He won’t go out again at all,” said Mandir. “Bel-Sumai is sure to call off the search. Why bother with it, when they’ve got more than enough suspects right here?”

  “If they let Shala go without consequences, your brothers may decide to run away as well.” Taya was considering doing the same. Just grab Setsi and Nindar and ride for Rakigari. But they wouldn’t be able to hide from the crown’s agents as Shala was doing, since their destination was a Coalition temple, and everybody knew that.

  “I don’t think my brothers will leave,” said Mandir. “Shala had someplace to go, a home where she was wanted and might be welcomed back, even in her pregnant state. My brothers have nowhere and nobody.”

  “One of your brothers did leave, a while back,” said Taya.

  “Haban was an exception,” said Mandir. “My brothers have no skills—excepting you, Nindar, and perhaps Setsi—and they don’t know how to survive anywhere but here.”

  “Setsi has skills, but nothing I could see him making a living with,” said Nindar.

  “Then it’s a good thing he has magic,” said Taya. “Nindar, we want to hear your version of what happened the night of the murder.”

  Nindar looked alarmed. “I had nothing to do with it.”

  “Of course you didn’t,” said Taya. “We’re just trying to put together a timeline and figure out who had opportunity to deliver the poison. I’m looking for little details, things you might not think are important, such as whom you saw outside when you were trying to round up the dogs.”

  “Oh,” said Nindar. “Let’s see. I saw you two, and of course Setsi, because we all went out together. And I saw Shala and Runawir. And later—”

  “Hold on,” said Taya. “When did you see Shala?”

  “A few minutes after we went out,” said Nindar. “She was near the main house—I don’t think she wanted to range too far. She’s scared of the dogs.”

  But apparently not scared to steal a horse. “What was she doing when you saw her?”

  “Walking around near the house,” said Nindar. “If she was doing something else, I wasn’t close enough to see.”

  “And Runawir—was he with Shala?” asked Mandir.

  “No, he was alone, and that was later,” said Nindar. “We’d been out maybe fifteen minutes or so.”

  “What was he doing?” asked Mandir.

  “Just looking for the dogs.”

  “Who did you see after that—anyone?” asked Taya.

  “Tufan and his guards, rounding up the dogs.”

  Further questions gave her no additional information. Nindar’s story agreed with Setsi’s completely. Nindar headed into the stable to untack the horse, while she and Mandir turned toward the main house. They were alone now; the crowd had dispersed.

  Even so, she lowered her voice as she spoke to Mandir. “What’s nagging at me about this case is Yanzu. I can see all kinds of reasons people might have to kill Tufan, and we’ve speculated quite a bit about motives for his murder. But Yanzu feels
like an afterthought.”

  “That’s nagging at me too,” said Mandir. “Perhaps we’ve focused overmuch on Tufan.”

  “Shala, for example,” said Taya. “Tufan would have killed her baby if it had been born a girl, so it makes sense that she might murder Tufan to protect the unborn child. But if she’s the killer and that was her motive, why would she kill Yanzu as well?”

  Mandir nodded. “I know. It’s a good theory until you bring Yanzu into it.”

  “Then there’s Setsi and Nindar. Murdering Tufan would solve the problem they had. But if one or both of them killed him, why would they also kill Yanzu? I know he’s a zebu’s ass and everybody hates him. But hating someone is not sufficient motive to kill them.”

  Mandir glanced at her sidelong. “Else you would have killed me a long time ago.”

  She smiled. “Exactly.”

  “This is why I’m leaning toward Runawir as the murderer,” said Mandir. “We know he fought with Yanzu the night of the murder, and that fight was probably about Shala. That gives him a motive to kill Yanzu. As for Tufan, if Runawir believes he’s the father of her unborn baby, he might want to protect that baby. That gives him the motive—an urgent motive—to kill Tufan.”

  “Good point, although he doesn’t seem too concerned about Shala’s disappearance.”

  Mandir shrugged. “Maybe he doesn’t care about raising the baby. He just wants it to survive.”

  They reached the main house, which made conversation impractical, as there were too many ears about. Taya mulled over the possibilities as they headed to their guest room. She wondered: could a man such as Runawir, who had routinely raped a woman and bullied his brothers, be principled enough to want to protect his child? Maybe protecting one’s child wasn’t so much principled as it was instinctive, something nearly all men did, even terrible ones like Runawir.

  She arrived at their guest room and stopped short.

  The room was full of people. Three of the palace guards were there, searching through their things. Bel-Sumai had his brown dog with him.

  Mandir stepped protectively in front of her. “What are you doing in here?”